Rubenerd

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10:00 – The Mobile Phone Episode! People complaining about lack of memory in their phones, stupid ringtone subscription services that prey on children, expensive phone addons, my Motorola V3 telling me on screen that it can't charge, and McDonalds health campaign: a conflict of interests?

Recorded in Adelaide, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

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10:00 – The Whole Wheat Radio Episode! How I found WWR in November 2004, the first morning rant I ever heard, discovering the site and becoming hooked, creating the WWR page here on this site, and listening to my first live morning rant! Audio clips from WWR by Jim Kloss and Esther Golton

Recorded in Adelaide, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

2009 UPDATE: I guess I didn’t end up doing this after all!

Now that the Rubenerd Show is being released every weekday AND the fact the Rubenerd Wiki is now in place the reason for this blog's existence has been put into question.

So therefore, while I may add something occasionally, for more Rubenerd updates and entries you're best bet is just to visit the new Rubenerd Show Wiki, which is now the primary site once again.

Stressing again, this blog will remain online for now, but I won't be posting as often.

Cheerio,
Ruben

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10:00 – Google Gmail spam filters, specialised junk mail, the Blue Screen of Death in Windows XP, South Australian wine growers and excess grapes, Hawaiians stealing the Macadamia nuts from the Aussies, and what you can do on the Rubenerd Show wiki. Overcast and quiet today.

Recorded in Adelaide, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

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10:00 – Adhesive hooks, Australian Medicare national ID card, call from Microsoft, new schedule and website (WWR wiki style!), The Top 5 (signs you listen to too much commercial radio), listener mail (Richard of Little Rock, Arkansas, USA), and a Whole Wheat Radio site update.

Recorded in Adelaide, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

Did you know the disk image mounting preference pane is on your Mac right now waiting to be installed?

Just go to this folder and double click to install!:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskImages.framework/
Versions/A/Resources/DiskImages.prefPane

Alternatively, you can just make a link, no need for two copies of the one file:

ln -s /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskImages.framework/
Versions/A/Resources/DiskImages.prefPane ~/Library/PreferencePanes/

Done :)

(sorry for the title, couldn't resist!)

If you haven't been to the Whole Wheat Radio page lately, go and check it out! Jimbob has compeltely guttered and redesigned the site using a Wiki (as in Wikipedia), looks very professional and smooth. The ironic thing is this radio station has it better even than most of the terrestrial networks ;-).

I've jerry-rigged a personal page too on the Wiki, you can check it out at:
http://wholewheatradio.org/wiki/index.php/User:Rubenerd

Go to their front page and sign yourself up for your own free page too if you are Wheathead :-)

For those like me who bought The Sims 2 for my PowerPC-based Mac, it now works beautifully on Intel-based hardware with a bit of tweaking.

Universal Binary PatchPatch Now Available

If you have the PowerPC version of The Sims 2, it's painfully slow on any Intel Mac, but Aspyr has released the The Sims 2 rev.D Universal Patch which, amongst other things, lets you run it natively on Intel:

Getting Sound Working

After applying the patch, The Sims 2 still didn't have any sound on my MacBook Pro. I contacted Pica Australia Technical Support, and promptly got this solution from Kelly which worked like a charm:

1. Open Audio MIDI Setup (/Applications/Utilities/), then check the Audio Output setting.
2. Change the Audio Output setting to 44100.0 Hz.
3. Quit Audio MIDI Setup.

Other Advice To Solve Problems

Kelly also gave me this advice to follow if I still had problems. I didn't need to use it, but if you're having trouble you might find it useful:

Hi Ruben,

I recommend the following troubleshooting steps. Try running the Repair Disk Permissions function of the Disk Utility located in Applications/Utilities. Also, avoid installing the game to Applications or the Desktop; there are permissions conflicts that can arise when games are installed here. Games work best when they are installed in a separate games folder on the top/root level of your hard drive.

If the game is not currently stored in one of the aforementioned locations then sometimes just moving the game is not enough and it is necessary to reinstall. Reinstalling also gets rid of any game data that may have become corrupt. Be sure to trash the game’s preferences file(s) located in Home/Library/Preferences and Home/Library/Application Support and Home/Documents when you do so. Then just trash the current copy of the game and install a new copy. Then run the patch again. During the installation of the patch you will need to manual choose the folder The Sims 2 inside the Games folder. The apple installer will automatically choose the folder The Sims 2 in the Applications folder, this is not the right one.

Have fun :D.

Israel Brown's Crap and Stuff podcast is offline now for the third day since I started checking :(.

http://CrapAndStuff.com/.

Now I know it's not just me!

You know how at the beginning of a DVD you have to sit through all the Hollywood logo presentations and copyright warnings and during that time your fast-forward controls are 'disabled'? It is actually a standard part of the DVD… standard.

Most DVD players prohibit the viewer from performing a large majority of actions during sections of a DVD that are protected by this feature, and will display the no symbol or a message to that effect if any of these actions are attempted. It was intended for copyright notices and the ubiquitous (at least in the United States) FBI warning. Some publishers run protected commercials on their DVDs, which is widely seen as an abuse of the feature.

- English Wikipedia Project article: User Operation Prohibited

What really infuriates me about this sort of forced advertisement watching is that when I watch a DVD I've bought I've done just that; I've bought it. Commercial free-to-air networks can show advertisements because that's how they keep their networks free, but I shouldn't have to watch advertisements on something I've paid for. It's ludicrous.